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old previews - Stryker's Run III

David Jefferies, programmer and project leader, has confirmed that this project will now "almost certainly never be released". David has been working for Psygnosis in Leeds for around a year, and any code he writes now automatically becomes the property of Psygnosis. Similarly the lead artist is now working for SCi (Swiv, Swiv3D, Carmegeddon and so on) and has no free time that he can spend on the project. When he started work at Psygnosis David thought the project might at some time be finished, but now he has virtually categorically stated that it is permanently dead. Which is a real shame.

Stryker's Run III looked like it was going to be one of those games which make everything else seem somehow pale in comparison. It aimed to be an Acorn platform game which bucked the trend of awful graphics (a la Sylvia Laine), aiming for something more Flashback-like, although with gameplay a cross between a platformer and a beat'em'up.

It's a shame the game will never be released after all the work that went into it. The main code had all been written, but there was still a lot of tidying up, debugging, playtesting and level details to be completed.

For those of you who haven't heard previously about SRIII, here's some more information: (not that it's much use now!)

[SRIII logo]Stryker's Run III's story stated that the game was set in a city in the middle of a huge riot. The anarchists are out in force against the police, with John Stryker stuck in the middle, with both the police and the anarchists after him. Since Stryker's Run II (of 1987 vintage) John has been through intensive martial arts training, and now has a spectacular range of moves at his disposal. On each level Stryker has certain objectives to meet - he might have to blow up a bridge, for example. (In fact, the game had little to do with the previous two incarnations, other than the name of the game and the name of the main character).

[Stryker] Claimed game features included:

  • Full screen multi-directional parallax scrolling
  • Over 1000 frames of smooth rotoscoped animations (similar to those used in Flashback only larger and more detailed)
  • Karate moves performed by one of the country's top karate experts
  • Advanced artificial intelligence (whatever that may mean)
  • 10 megabytes of background graphics
  • 5 levels
[Stryker] The game was actually designed for the Risc PC, and so aimed to take full advantage of it! (This was before the StrongARM, however!) Some features could be disabled to make it run on ARM 3 (or slower) machines. Additional Risc PC features included:
  • 16-bit music (if you had a 16-bit sound card or Risc PC 700)
  • High-resolution screen modes
  • Many more in-game special effects, such as transparency and reflections

The game was due to be published by Davyn Computer Services. The team developing it christened themselves `Godhead', after a Nitzer Ebb song (don't ask me!). The game was originally being developed by Machine Love, but the least said about that the better - it ceased to exist when the person in charge turned out to be defrauding its members and contacts.

Five pictures of a development version of the game are still available here:


...this page last updated: 23/6/97...
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Abandoned games
Darklands, Fantasia's ToyParty and VOTI's EMD have all reported signs of life in the recent past, whilst Skirmish is apparently still ongoing but is way behind schedule and it looks like it might well never make it out. TEK and Iron Dignity are still on the way, although again both are pretty heavily delayed. And as for R-Comp's port of F16 Fighting Falcon, it looks like it will never be released, having been killed by frame-rates that were just too low.


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